Blog 10

Steve Jobs' life story is a great example of why a hunger for knowledge and a desire to learn are more meaningful than formal education. He inspires me to think outside of the box and pursue opportunities that are not the norm. In today's society all kids are forced to go to school for a certain number of years and all are set on a path of college preparation. While not all kids choose to go to college, most are still trained for it and expected to at least attempt a college education. This means that people who do not care to learn or who are simply not mature enough to gain the full experience that a college education can provide are guided into a system they care little about.

His story as well as the story of many others I have encountered in the past few years inspire me to keep an open mind when it comes to advising my own children to attend college in the future. Although I feel that education is very important, if you are not passionate about you are learning, the information is useful. I want to instill a since of desire in my children and guide them to think for themselves and pursue anything they are interested in. If this means that they do not go straight to college from school, I need to remember that some of the most successful people follow their own path. As long as I am constantly learning and they are too, we will all be happy and successful.

Assignment 9

What's unique about design thinking approach to innovation?

Design driven innovation is different from innovation in general because it is not innovation in response to consumer demand. Innovative companies design new ideas and then get the consumers' attention. The consumer may not even know that they want what the company has created, but once they see the idea they may gradually begin accepting and embracing the new product. Apple is a great example of a design driven company. They tell the consumer what they want, what they need even.

Employees of design driven companies are constantly brainstorming and sharing their ideas, even if they do not know how their ideas will be used yet. Once they have a collection of designs, they can begin finding ways to use them and then share them with consumers.

Another key difference is that a design driven company may not focus solely on products, but on the processes of the entire company. From work flow to tangible products, every aspect of the workplace has potential for improvement in a designer's eyes.

Assignment 8 - Neural NetworkingTechnology

Neural networks can be useful for a wide variety of business applications. Anything that requires finding and analyzing patterns in a series of inputs can benefit greatly from neural network software. One interesting use of neural networks is in the the real-time face detection used to identify people in videos and pictures. To use a neural network for this purpose, the network must be trained to identify faces, non-faces and face masks using a complicated training technique.

The Use of Neural Networks in Real Time Face Detection

The neural network in this case cannot stand alone. It requires a series of steps to train the network, prepare data for input and interpret the output. Face recognition tricky since the human face is constantly changing. The more "practice" the network gets in identifying faces, the more accurate it will become as it will be exposed to more and more unique circumstances. Different backgrounds affect the recognition and no one can predict every possible combination of colors and shapes that the network will be exposed to.